So after looking into it more with an open mind, too much of it clips for me...even Xanthochroid clips to intense degrees, and I hate audio shredding. The better produced black metal bands are pretty awesome, though, like Forever Dawn: https://foreverdawn.bandcamp.com/

Some people think having djent guitar tone and odd time signatures automatically makes them progressive, which is hilarious...to me, progressive is more along the lines of Twelve Foot Ninja, Haken, Ne Obliviscaris, Sigh, etc. Well put together composition is definitely something missing in progressive music these days, but it's a lot less pretentious now than it was in the 1970s, fortunately. Progressive is a somewhat subjective term, because it ranges from culture to culture. French metal is nuts, but that's because the culture is already very creative, so they don't get labelled avant-garde the way a band like, say, Leprous does. The best avant-garde groups definitely started more traditional, though. When they don't start traditionally, it's just pretentious noise generally.

Well, I can tell you this: There's really only 5 or 6 metal genres. Progressive metal as a genre doesn't really exist because it can't stand alone, it has to mix with a genre e.g. prog+heavy (Queensrÿche), prog+death (Gorguts). A lot of the times bands that call themselves "progressive" miss the idea of being progressive completely. Rather than making complex and well composed (emphasis on WELL COMPOSED) music they rely on gimmicks to make it seem like they're complex, like extended wanking sessions, nonsensical song structures, adding a random exotic instrument for the sake of adding some random exotic instrument, throwing in too much outside influence etc. A lot of the times they'll call themselves something, avant-garde black metal for example, without actually being avant-garde OR black metal. To recognize and tell those pretenders apart from the real deal, it's important to listen to pioneering and established bands in the genre first. This goes for all music genres.